Informing Contexts Week 1- Context Shapeshifting

As Szarkowski claims photography is a process not based on synthesis but selection (Szarkowski, 1966).  As photographers we are doing the selecting.  Where we place the camera, the light we choose, how tight we crop, it all makes a selection with in our control.

Szarkowski lists 5 Characteristics:
The Think Itself
The Detail
The Frame
Time
The Vantage Point
(Szarkowski, 1966)

One characteristic I might add is 'Light.'

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Light is paramount in photography to the point it almost has meaning in itself.  Where the light is coming from, what it illuminates or what it conceals has great effects both presentation and interpretation of the images.  Shore also defines 4 central ways a photograph is transformed; flatness, frame time and focus (Shore, 1998), - but again Light is left unrecognized.  Perhaps its because I work with composites that I recognize light to be such a living element of photography.  In composites one is continually seeking the light, the source and the amount to better understand the relationship of the elements within the image.



The only characteristic I might reject is 'the thing itself.'  There is too much manipulation in photography to holistically accept what is pictured as the actual, or the actual in fragments. Even if there is no post editing the other characteristics listed (detail, frame, time, vantage point) all manipulate the actual that we are viewing.

The inside of a guitar, Sourced @https://www.elitereaders.com/50-stunning-photos-arent-seem/?cn-reloaded=1

Maybe what I reject is that a photograph can represent with the intent of one specific actual interpretation.  Because even without the photographers manipulation of presentation the viewer themselves interpret according to their own knowledge base in a number of variety of ways single to each viewer.  If photography is capturing or revealing a real thing why does it fulfill in us such a sense of creation?
At the same time- if photography isn't a tangible sense of reality then what comes closer?  Maybe nothing.

In the construction of the Tableau in photography I believe today we are doing nothing different than has been done for years in photography.  We just have a variety of more accessible tools to do it with.  In my photography I take the 'made' object to the extreme, to a whole other world, but the gap is so conscientiously wide the viewer is obviously aware.

The characteristic top of the importance list in my photography is 'Time'.  Particularly because I photograph children. As a mother of 5 children I am a witness to the unavoidable element of time passing.  And capturing a moment in time before it is gone has great nostalgic meaning and value to a parent that has much investment in an end product, but true love for the moments that have passed.

I am interested in Shore's description of Extrusive Time- with a longer exposure and a thinner veil between reality and dreams (Shore, 1998).  I may want to incorporate this into a future image.




John SZARKOWSKIS. 1966. The Photographer's Eye. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
http://lemarbarrett.blogspot.com/2014/05/research-and-planning-this-essay-will.html
https://www.elitereaders.com/50-stunning-photos-arent-seem/?cn-reloaded=1